We can only look forward... April 2010
By: Meena Kandasamy
...when we no longer have to look back.
The future of cast
Lokesh Khodke
Turning in any direction you like," B R Ambedkar once stated, "caste
is the monster that crosses your path." I write about the future of
caste with the determination and the desperation of a suicide bomber
who has been handpicked to assassinate that monster. If you look
closely at my fragile frame, you will see the belt-bomb strapped to
me; you can count the hand-grenades I caress. On my mission, I turn
bullet-spitting historian, I turn acid-throwing stalker. My anger is
the most potent undetonated device that I carry. I write with frenzy,
with blinding rage, with hatred, seeing nothing ahead of me but the
obituary of the oppressor I have set out to kill. I am baying for
blood. Its death dances out in front of my eyes.
Like the rest of my tribe that is indoctrinated to destroy itself in
order to annihilate a cruelty whose presence makes the world a worse
place, I dream of the appointed day, I rehearse scenarios. There is a
smile on my lips because I am in the company of women and men, like
me, who would die, if that is what it takes, to put an end to this
dehumanising system. This is an obsession, a shame that spills over.
We have chosen our target, and like a secret society of terrorists we
work out the logistics in the belief that we will live forever, that
we have the license to kill. In this macabre jihad of sorts, we are
convinced that caste is a savage system that deserves to be crushed
and consigned to the pages of history.
Caste has survived because of its atrocities, literally over the dead
bodies of lynched lovers, over charred Dalit settlements, through the
use of organised violence to enforce and maintain super-ordination and
subordination. Caste is the colourful poison in syringes injected into
women who elope. Caste razes a hut to ashes in Kilvenmani. Caste kills
those who are defenceless and unarmed in Khairlanji. Caste is the
dried excrement that finds its way into the mouths of rebellious
Dalits in Thinniyam. Caste is the massacre of Dalit village headmen in
Melavalavu. Caste is extrajudicial detention, torture and murder;
caste is custodial gang-rape. Caste operates in consensus. Its
atrocious face comes about because of collusion, and the absence of
any substantial group of privileged people who are willing to turn
caste-traitors.
On the other hand, the caste-Hindu backlash refuses to accept who we
are when they know what we are – the result of a supremacist mindset
that has the single aim of delegating Dalits to the bottom of the
social hierarchy. This everyday dismissal has several facets. In my
immediate, personal case, it denies me my Dalit selfhood, doubts my
origins because of my way with words, my choice of clothes. This
explicit project engages with me in every sphere of life. It is a dual
struggle in which one has to escape pigeonholing and also affirm ones
identity when on the edge of assimilation.
Cola casteism
Fighting against caste, and resisting casteism, involves combating the
malady of easy assumptions and crude prejudices. It means dealing with
a discriminatory mindset that eagerly awaits the opportunity to
translate its deep-set hatred into action. This is the mindset that
advises me to go to the slums and ensure that all Dalits get food,
shelter and clothing when I begin a discussion on how caste operates
within the classroom. It sets my priorities and defines and drafts my
agenda. It dictates the notes stuck on my desk, drafts the to-do list
on my mobile phone. And if I were to listen to them and submit myself,
I would be bestowed with an honorary inclusion to offset the centuries
of systematic exclusion. In exchange for my commodification and
celebration of the outcast experience, I would become a token, a
trophy to be flaunted. After the ceremonial co-optation, I would be
asked to don the mantle of a gatekeeper, with an instruction to let in
only those who pose no threat to the status quo.
In all other cases, the system operates through distrust: and a
preconceived notion that we are not only low, but also evil.
Demonising us, and dehumanising us, allows caste Hindus the luxury of
having an argument to defend their case, and to gloss over all the
social injustices with which the system has been permeated. This is
one of the reasons why, when asked to critically reflect about the
future of this structure, I find most dominant 'upper' castes not
holding any discussion on how the structure should be dismantled;
instead, they adopt a dialogue of condescension in which their
approach seems to revolve around humanising or civilising or educating
the Dalits. Another favourite position taken by a majority of the
'upper' castes on how to eradicate the caste system is the bizarre
request to scrap the reservation policy at the earliest.
Currently, arguments about the purity or impurity of the castes are
not given as much emphasis as are those about innate intelligence or
refinement. This is because of the social shift in importance accorded
to religion and piety vis-a-vis importance accorded to talent,
sophistication and social mobility. In his book on Hindu manners and
customs, the 18th-century Roman Catholic missionary Abbe Dubois
recorded an instance of how a Tamil Brahmin woman fled the place when
her Shudra friend had publicly disclosed that she had tasted chicken
broth. In the present day, neither beef-eating nor beer-drinking would
make anybody any less a Brahmin; just as all claims to vegetarianism
by a Dalit is not going to reduce her social stigmatisation.
What would the death of the Indian village – that bastion of caste
supremacy – mean? Suppose we simply entrusted every village to our
governments, and suppose they decided overnight to achieve a complete
corporate sell-out. I can still see the stratification, and almost
anticipate reading research volumes on the forms and functions of
Coca-Cola casteism. On the other hand, neither do I believe that the
mere reaffirmation of local, territorial or linguistic identities and
ethnicities, even as one witnesses genocide and ethnic cleansing in
pockets of the Subcontinent, help to diminish the relevance of caste.
It is wishful thinking that caste, also being a 'geo-demographic'
system, could simply fade out and not carry any relevance if only the
people were displaced. At the village level, caste may no longer be a
system of production, but it remains a set of coded practices. The
emergence of caste-neutral occupations has not led to the death of any
single caste identity. Such predictions about urbanisation's effect on
caste have likewise proved futile. Cruising across the seas, it has
been carried to every landscape. Even expat Southasians are in no mood
to give it up so easily.
My techie friend in Silicon Valley, a fellow Tamil Dalit, shared an
anecdote about driving through the inner city in Denver along with a
colleague. Seeing the poor African Americans there, the rundown
neighbourhoods and obvious poverty, the other man, a caste Hindu,
said, "Namba ooru cheri maadiriyae irukku illa?" (It is exactly like
the Dalit settlements in our village, isn't it?) That is the problem
with the caste-Hindu mind: it is trained to recognise caste
everywhere, to replicate its order. It is for this reason that it is
often seen as perfectly alright when a non-resident Indian acts
ultra-strict and oppressive at home, wondering, "How do I face my
relatives and family back in the village if my daughter marries a
kallu (black)?" His fear is as heartfelt as that of a 15th-century
Brahmin facing excommunication for transgressing caste boundaries.
President Barack Obama might be astonished that his black brothers and
sisters are not only seen through a coloured perspective, but also in
a casteist manner. This is not like the parallels that Dalits love to
make in order to build networks of solidarity and shared experience
with African Americans – rather, this is a small example of the
stigmatisation in which caste-supremacist Indians love to indulge.
Until there is a change in this mindset, wishing away caste is going
to be a pointless pastime.
Even Ambedkar's idea of discarding Hinduism as a means of escaping
caste is no longer feasible. The promise of egalitarianism in other
religions may be enticement enough, but converts would have by now
realised firsthand that such changes are merely cosmetic. As a truly
secular religious identity, caste has literally gone places,
permeating every aspect of any faith-based order. Dalit Muslims and
Nadar Christians are identities as well entrenched as that of Iyengar
Hindus – thus making caste an Indian and Southasian, rather than a
Hindu, identity.
Most backward
The philosopher Naomi Zack has called race a biological fiction.
Caste, too, is another that-which-cannot-be-named fiction, which
merely derives its reality from the manner in which it affects
people's lives, occupies their consciousness and establishes itself as
a nightmare for any theoretician of history. Instead of laying trust
in multiplicities and mind-boggling hybrids, even those who are
anti-caste believe in splicing the world into uniform binaries:
Dalit/non-Dalit, Brahmin/non-Brahmin. Although each of its individual
parameters has undergone change, caste by itself has survived by
reincarnating itself in the face of any kind of social and economical
upheaval.
The eminent sociologist M N Srinivas observed that one of the
commonest and most cynical features of the movement towards equality
was that "each caste regarded itself as the equal of castes superior
to it while simultaneously denying similar claims from those inferior
to it." Caste, however, calls for a continuous revision of theory.
Srinivas's conjecture is no longer true, because what we have observed
since the 1990s has been the race for claiming backwardness (or in
some states such as Tamil Nadu, 'most backwardness') in order to gain
from the quota system.
This struggle to be labelled inferior and unrepresented is part of an
elaborate masquerade. When the Gujjars wanted to claim the Scheduled
Tribe status, they paralysed India by bringing the railways to a halt.
The demand of the Vanniyars – in a truly novel casteist manner, by
setting fire to Dalit settlements – in order to achieve the separate
category of Most Backward Classes was also successful. In both of
these instances, the Indian nation (especially its trigger-hungry
police force) was portrayed as villainous – not merely denying these
people what were phrased as 'legitimate' rights, but also silencing
the people by killing those who dared to protest. The corpses of those
killed in the police violence became the currency that let these
castes strike a deal with the state.
Lokesh Khodke
But caste does not end with being merely a blackmail tool that tries
to obtain positions of privilege for individual communities. It is as
vehement and its movement is as orchestrated when it seeks to deny the
same power or authority or opportunity to others. Caste is enshrined
in the 100-odd gory self-immolation bids that took place all over
North India against V P Singh's government's decision to implement the
recommendations by the Mandal Commission to introduce reservation for
the Backward Classes. Caste is a system that lacks any semblance of an
excuse for its existence, and yet it has the power to hold a country
to ransom.
Like its strength, the only weakness of the caste system lies in the
fact that caste is never based on choice. The supremacist and
patriarchal nature of its control ensures that, at every stage, people
are stripped of choices. A decision to step across those restrictive
caste lines, to refuse to accept the enforcement of caste practices or
to collude with a projects of violence and discrimination, to resist
its patriarchal controls and the patterns of thought that it
imposes/ingrains/instigates in our midst will lead to multiplicity and
unpredictability and disintegration. It is for this reason that I
often imagine the annihilation of caste as a feminist exercise – where
women totally reject the control of their sexuality in the name of
caste or custom, refuse to internalise patriarchy, and speak out
against the other forms of discrimination deeply embedded in society.
The readiness to destroy caste requires us to destroy a part of
ourselves. But finally it will culminate in the end of imagined or
assumed inferiorities and superiorities. That is why, irrespective of
where we find ourselves in that hierarchy, we can militate against
caste only if each of us make it a personal rebellion, a conscious
choice to defy that oppressive, self-defeating system. As an
Ambedkarite, I can look at the future of caste only from an obsessive
perspective of annihilating it: I believe that real looking forward
can take place only when there is no reason to look back.
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